Late Afternoon
3rd November, 72 BNM
Equestria, south midlands
‘Everfree forest’, inner depths

5 days had taken them deep into the Everfree forest, and even now Equestria seemed a world away. In here they were in uncharted territory, so progress was slow, methodical, as Starswirl searched with Chack in tow.
Gnarled tree trunks, shades and darkness cast by the large overgrown vines, branches and old forest blotted out the late morning sun. In here, life began, thrived, suffered and died in the forest, hardly venturing beyond its dark, untamed depths. A world of untamed natural, beautiful brutality, nestled right in the midlands of perhaps the most ‘cultivated’ landmass on the planet. Magic from Unicorns, Weather altering from the Pegasi, hard efforts to alter the land from Earth Ponies, made Equestria, and a large part of the world’s north western landmass, the least natural behaving land known.
But all the ‘taming’ of Equestria merely diverted what disorder to balance it out into concentrated spots, none bigger than the Everfree forest.
The old forest hid many secrets, and as a spillover of raw magic, a consequence of magical manipulating of Equestria’s landscape, weather and even wildlife in some case, tales of strange creatures not seen before, of supposedly mysterious features hidden in the forest’s depths, from spirits, to trees that moved, to unholy and heavenly creatures of great mystery.

Evening
Everfree Forest, natural crossroads

Once again they’d stopped in a clearing, as Starswirl had decided to have a look around, his blue horn shining as he used a subtle spell beyond Chack’s knowledge. The Unicorn mumbled under his breath, his grey beard dishevelled from their travels, whilst the Salamander could only follow the Wizard where he went.
Looking around, Chack saw the path they’d come on, a crudely marked trail, winding away into the dark woods behind them, whilst ahead, 2 other paths beckoned, their trails and features indistinguishable from each other from the alcove where three
Nearby, Starswirl grunted as he stopped his spell:
“Too vague, too unreadable, yet its everywhere.”
“Care to let me be privy to what you are thinking? Or should I remain an uninformed accomplice on this expedition.” Chack rebuked in a deriding tone from across the clearing, as he gazed around the sights while Starswirl replied:
“This forest is old, it has much magic flowing through it, magic that could be rather easily harnessed for extreme power, were it not so widespread to the point of it being too thin to use.”
At the wizard’s explanation, Chack gazed sceptically around the forest, saying: “And those creatures, your old friend, how much forest magic would be needed to be able to defeat them?”
“It would take harnessing power from across a quarter of this province sized forest’s inherent magic to do that. But where we stand shows that is not a labour we need do.”
“How so?” Chack asked, but as Starswirl began to speak, he could swear he heard a faint whisper, a voice he once knew but seemed so far and forgotten that it was impossible to be here now. It came from all around them.
“-trails. These do not run on their own, there are sources, focus points, wellsprings in which the magic is focused, like lakes along a river which other rivers flow into.”
Starswirl finished, as he shone his blue horn light on the trail, the slightly white glowing smoke along the trail, like mist moving in a barely visible stream, pulsated along the paths.
“Might those energies be watching us somehow?” Chack cautiously asked, fingering his sword ever so slightly. Looking around warily, Starswirl had the same feeling of suspicion:
“I’d be surprised if they weren’t. This forest has many eyes, and it somehow feels more connected at a mystical than it should be.”
Looking up, both saw what very little sunlight was getting through the treetops was fading fast. Looking down, the very slightly glowing vapours that flowed through the forest floor seemed to light up the paths as the day ended.
Regarding the trail with caution, Starswirl suggested smartly: “Perhaps we sleep up a tree tonight? I feel this might also be a hunting trail, and I’d like not just my magic to keep us-, Chack?”
Looking around, Starswirl saw Chack had already wandered over to a large mangrove tree of sorts, vines hanging down that he brushed aside. The armour clad Salamander stopped at the trunk, gesturing with a head nod:
“This looks safe enough.”
“In this forest I believe safe is a word hardly used…” Starswirl remarked, the Unicorn walking over to the tree to begin looking at its higher branches for a place to rest and unpack.
Still, as the night drew on, the faint glows of the mist created an aura of mystery in this part of the forest, and the prevalence of a watchful presence was unnerving as they both settled for sleep later that night.

Later that night

Chack’s eyes flickered, he’d chosen to watch while Starswirl took a power nap. Yet he felt sleepy, unusually so. He could go 3 days without sleep if need be, but something in the air made his head swim, the very air he breathed felt heavy, intoxicating, and his vision began to shimmer.
His eyes flickered, and he felt his head slowly slump forwards, as sleep took him.
Nearby, Stasrwirl shuffled in his sleep, kicking slightly as he groaned at something in his dreams.

Falling, he was falling, yet his landing was soft, wherever he was.
Looking around, it was a shining white mist, slowly growing darker as shapes began to emerge.
Figures, much like himself, Salamanders that seemed familiar. Very vague, almost rotting and degraded houses and paths through Salaman, his home, appeared and disappeared as he walked through the strange, vivid dreamscape.
Echoes of voices he recognised egged him further on.
“-disobeyed me, dishonour even if you vanquished our foes!”
“-banished, you refuse to take your life.”
“-helpful to the Nationalists, even for a foreign lake lizard like you are.”
“-do not trust what you hear, there are things going on in Equestria that you cannot comprehend, that even I cannot, things the prophecy hasn’t helped me see.”
“-you did this to me! You took my future with my horn and magic!”
Staggering through the fogs, Chack saw a few lingering shapes with each whisper from his past, long and recent. His old master, the aged Salamander who died in a coup shortly after Chack’s exile, avenged now but still one who rejected him. A Nationalist general he’d met, looking down on him for his race despite his accomplishments as an experienced warrior and weaponsmith, Starswirl himself giving Chack warnings of goings on beyond both of their knowledge, and that Teal maned Unicorn he attacked during his avenging of his master’s death in Salaman 40 years ago before coming to Equestria. She had tried to kill him, but he got her, lost an arm that he grew back but delivered a fatal blow to her before fleeing.
Why was she there among the others?
Wandering through, vivid flowing white and blue shapes, like orbs of light hat trailed jellyfish like tendrils from them, circled around him, an unintelligible dialect echoing from them as he wandered down the path through the white mist.
But in the distance, he could sense turmoil, far away beyond his sight, visible only as a spectrum of auras of chaos and evil on the horizon, no longer brewing but unleashed against the world, and presided over all of them was an aura darker than any of them, be it the hesitant or the vicious ones it lorded over.
One of the lesser ones, the one of green light in shadows, bore into his soul, a pair of piercing green eyes amidst a haggard, blueish-grey scorpion-centaur hybrid, reminded him of the Teal Maned one he thought he’d slayed. Utter hatred came from there, aimed at him, unlike the others whose ill content was aimed more generally.
Staggering, he turned his gaze forwards, as he noticed strange pillars, and towering before him, a transparent floor he walked over, where strange trees of light grew downwards away from him, interlocking their branches.
One massive one called to him, ushering him forwards, he reached close, feeling its power emanating before and beneath him, as he came to see it more vividly.
Suddenly, the world fell out from under him, and the world turned white in a flash, his very last vision a pair of white glowing tendrils reaching out to him, and blue/white fire engulfing him in a searing, but cold light.

Midnight
3rd/4th November, 72 BNM
Equestria, south midlands
‘Everfree forest’, deep chasms

The ground raced up to meet Chack’s face as he snapped awake by gravity’s harsh embrace. Jarring his head, thankful for his samurai helmet, the dirt and moss caked his mouth as he slid down the steep slope, falling into a small muddy puddle at the bottom of the hole.
He looked around, seeing rock walls around him overgrown with treetrunks and roots, vines and moss, yet it glowed a faint white enough to see where obstacles were. Dandelion like floaters, glowing white in the air, littered the cavern’s depths that beckoned to him. Looking down, and then up the slope, Chack realised something as he saw the white mist trailing down into this chasm he’d fallen into, and flowing into the cavern.
Whatever this was, it had caused him to have this dream, it led him here. His old master had told him that sometimes if vivid enough, dreams are more than just dreams.
Pulling his sword out, Chack ventured forward. He’d go forth, but not unprotected, he wasn’t naïve after all.

Meanwhile

He saw the 3 prophets, the 3 blind mares, their eyes glowing, before all turned black, and he awoke in the journey he’d been making.
Trudging out across the stark, brown landscape, Starswirl kept his blue cloak close as the wind picked up. Before him, the castle ruins lay before him, one of a few hastily erected in this desolate world as a fortress to defend what they had to still fight over.
Staring out, Starswirl saw the convoy approaching, a few chariots being drawn up the pathway, under the archway that marked the edge of their defence lines in this part of Equestria.
Further out beyond, the dusk light of the sun bathed the land in a red tinge that befitted its desolate state. Fighting over resources included fighting over the weather control, and while some places became deprived of it, other places drowned or were turned into oceans.
Overhead, as a result of fighting over control, of power, the shattered remains of the moon beckoned, thousands of fragments surrounding a ruined husk hanging high in the skies. When it went, the world was changed forever, and nopony knew what started its destruction, only that it behaved strangely beforehand, changing its patterns of movement.

His hoofs kicking up dirt and dust from the trail, as the browning grasses and vines growing around the castle ruins.
The chariots were unpacked, as brown cloaked Unicorns, Pegasi, Earth ponies, and foreign Diamond Dogs, Gryphons and even a dragoness helped unload the supplies. Walking up, pulling down his hood, Starswirl gruffly asked the convoy’s leader aboard the nearest cargo chariot, while those of this ‘clan’ unpacked.
“Were you followed?”
Shaking her head, the White Alicorn nodded, her pink mane cut short for practicality. In her brown cloak, Celestia remarked bitterly as another crate of supplies floated past her:
“No, and no sign of anypony when we went out.”
“Did you find anything in the raid either?”
At this, Celestia nodded, as she gestured to the crate she hovered over to the front of the wagon now, from beneath its covering:
“The armoury was empty, except for this, they left in a hurry.”
Pacing forwards slowly, Starswirl pulled open the lid of the crate, while nearby a few of the cloaked ponies stared over in curiosity, while the dragoness slowly turned to the horizon, spotting something coming she couldn’t make out amidst some very dark stormclouds, their red hues seeming to give them a bloody-pink colouration in the skies.
Yanking off the lid, Starswirl gazed inside, but his looked turned to confusion, then horror.
Inside lay a black stone, as a grey eye suddenly blinked from within, widening and then narrowing in recognition and victorious rage.
A hum of yellow magic came from before him, as Starswirl suddenly saw Celestia’s yellow magic glowing in his face:
“He’ll give me Luna alive, for you and the others…”
The betrayal and anger surging turned to panic as the dragoness called out:
“Fliers from the north!”
At that same moment, brown cloaks flew off as pony, Gryphon and dog troopers of the north kingdom, clad in their silver and black armour, emerged among them. They’d taken or killed ones they knew and replaced them with dopplegangers, infiltrators.
As the dragoness flung a few aside, magic and weapons flew, clangs of steel on steel filling the air as Starswirl turned to Celestia to charge her, his blue magic firing her backwards through the chariot in his rage.
Celestia took flight, firing a yellow beam as she fled, screaming back in a plea to her old master.
“She is my sister!”
“She’s already gone you foolish girl!”
In his fury, Starswirl flung off his cloak, as black and silver clad pegasi, dragons, Gryphons and even strange creatures from abroad, and some abominations he couldn’t even name, flew in as a fleet.
He charged, teleporting to enemies, firing spell after spell, but every kill, every blasted foe, every crumbling part of the castle ruins they sheltered in, was merely seconds passing in the time of this inevitable loss.
Soon, it was only him, as he saw a few of his followers, remnants of the Royalists that managed to be organised enough in this world of the Savant’s, carried off by his creations and servants.
He felt arms enclose him, but he blasted them off. Their bewitched, brainwashed and slavish devotion showed in the very slight grey glows in their eyes. Some of these creatures and beings had been indoctrinated from birth, unable to resist.
Blue magic diminished, and before long, he couldn’t teleport, as magic grapples forced him to his knees, as a large shape came hovering over him from behind, and an electrifying sensation filled his mind along with white lighting around his head. He blacked out without a second longer of agony.

He had awakened before a large flowing river of some kind, but it was strange, it alternated between water, a strange sickly smelling brown liquid, and a poisonous concoction of other colours.
Nearby, he saw the island he was on was not only his. Laid before him tauntingly was a Katana sword, and he saw the 5 artefacts from his journey so long ago that had been taken from him in an attack he barely escaped from.
Staring out, he saw a set of 7 silhouettes hovering atop the hill near the strange river’s edge, as a myriad of shapes flittered along the edge of the river.
An orange, shapeless mass that radiated subdued hunger shifted on one bank, a serpentine, insect scaled demon on another nearby, coyly regarding him with taunting desire that was clearly torture of his soul. On another bank, a yellow centipede like dragon towered tauntingly before him, a sick grin on his face at finally getting him, while nearby, a grey, stone and flesh skinned brute bore into his soul with piercing red eyes that radiated power and anger.
Nearby the centre, two more, a centaur like being with scorpion body and ape face features, smiled grimly at him, radiating bitterness and jealousy, while beside her, a sadder looking light blue bodied Windigo/Alicorn hybrid with a burning orange feathered mane sat passively, radiating an aura of hopelessness.
Behind them all, a longer bodied figure was hidden in shadow, as a shaded figure with red and yellow eyed stared back, his long serpent like body showing the long arms and legs off, and the engulfing wings on his back overshadowing the 2 long horns like a savage deer’s atop his head. A look of smug victory came from the taunting, glowing grin of his jagged teeth.
In all of them, the shimmer of the grey glow of indoctrination, these 7 longer than others, was present.
Above them all though, a familiar face, one not indoctrinated at all, hovered down into the circle of 7 watching Starswirl’s prison island on this changing river.
In an aura of black smoke, Siral emerged, clad in more refined robed befitting a ruler, but he still sported the jagged scarring of his encounter with his first Alicorn now over a century ago by his age, even longer in real time.
Eyes wide, Starswirl saw a number of long pony horns, Alicorn horns, adorning his robes of ruling. One dark blue horn on the shoulder made him hang his head in despair, Celestia’s betrayal had been for naught indeed.
A black and grey aura of magic engulfed Starswirl’s chin, as Siral turned him to look him in the eye:
“All this fighting, it caused this. Well, with you gone, and when the others all are, with the power we unleashed able to destroy, we can rebuild, better than before, just like promised.”
Flicking Starswirl’s chin away in his magic grip, Siral rumbled as he hovered backwards and upwards, regarding with a hoof each of his seven creations, the seventh still clad in mystery, though 3 of them Starswirl recognised as their identities being present so long ago in Canterlot’s attack and King Nova’s death.
That had been 60 years ago.
As he hovered up, Siral’s command carried in the air as he flicked a hoof, and Starswirl’s island began to sink:
“Change is traumatic, but necessary. If only you realised it like I did, instead of remaining a willing slave to your sworn loyalties. Goodbye, old friend.”
The multiformed liquid of the river engulfed him, as Starswirl’s vision swam in the scalding hot liquid.
He tasted sweet and sickly liquid, yet also burning poisons, the river was slave to Siral’s creations’ wiles like so many other features.
Pressure built, until finally he took a breath, and burning filled his chest while his vision fluttered…

Midnight
3rd/4th November, 72 BNM
Equestria, south midlands
‘Everfree forest’, mangrove maze

Eyes snapping open, Starswirl choked on the muddy water he’d fallen into, spitting it out violently as the forest stream’s inky and murky taste filled his mouth as he coughed it up.
He gazed around, heart pounding at the vivid dream, almost like a vision. But he saw around him the faint white mist that had been on the trails. He’d sleepwalked it seemed, yet the dream had been too vivid to be coincidence.
Too vivid to be someone else exactly, it was as if he’d lived it himself. Perhaps he had, in another time. A time yet to come.
Yet the meaning was clear, it was a time yet to come he could not let happen.
Staring around, wiping some mud off his cloak, Starswirl looked around, knowing in the back of his mind that Chack was likely to be alright. But something called to him down this stream he’d been summoned to, zigzagging between the tree trunks and mangrove tree maze that loomed ahead. White floaters illuminated the trail, calling out to him, as the forest was eerily quiet all around him.
The Wizard ventured through the forest stream, knowing he’d seen many strange things, and that another wouldn’t hurt.

1 hour later
Deep Forest Chasms

The caverns, more like twisted tree roots forming a tunnel, flowed with the ethereal mist that glowed in the night, a light in the darkest night imaginable.
A thousand tree root ends reached out into the tunnel, either seeming to try and grab at Chack as he ventured further in, or reaching in the direction he was headed.
Soon, he came to a tight passage, and Chack shuffled awkwardly through the narrow gap, his armour scraping on the jagged tree roots while he squeezed through one step at a time.
After a few metres, he emerged, but he saw a strange clearing, almost like a bulbous space enclosed in thick trees. Where a massive tree once stood had been overgrown with vines on the outside, died, and rotted away, left an enclosure of vines that acted like a vine cathedral of sorts around what lay in the centre of its ground.
A small puddle, yet it seemed to be as clear as glass, glowed a faint white in the middle of the green and black clearing. 2 metres wide, it seemed to hum almost before him.
Tentatively stepping forwards, Chack suddenly felt his movements stopped, as a faint white glow engulfed his armour and sword suddenly.
“Remove your worldly possessions, you do not need them here.”
Like a voice on the wind, yet vibrating like an earth tremor in his mind, Chack groaned as the voice compelled him. But he refused at first, asking bluntly to the voice that seemed to come from around the Salamander:
“Who are you?”
“What you see before you and more.”
“I do not appreciate being led astray in the night, speak clearly demon!” Chack accused. A humming seemed to fill the air, as a faint white fire, more illusion than flame, rose from the puddle before him like a wispy bonfire:
“Demon? I would take insult to that were I less patient. The only things demons and I share is that we need no physical form, but unlike them I need not control and consume others to exist, but by creating and letting life thrive I thrive. They are animals, they consume. I am more forest, I grow, I expand, I thrive in this peaceful chaos that is nature untamed.”
“So why the dream, why make me fall down a hole?”
“You are needed. You and another you came with, who will be told what we know that he must know as well.”
Looking around, Chack cautiously began to strip his armour and sword, as the ‘being’ echoed from the roots around the Salamander:
“I have watched through the roots and branches of my reach of the world outside that surrounds this domain. Whereas here there is no taming, no forced control, out there the world is shaped, and while it has done a decent enough job staying in balance, the imbalance that there is has meant my domain can grow. But, those who control it have changed, grown bolder and hungrier for control as centuries pass.”
“I was the first, but I didn’t desire power over others, I left, fading into legend.”
Around Chack, a few tree roots groaned, as a face emerged, equine almost, but warped and turned longer in its snout, like a wolf’s. Around it, emerging from the darkness, green eyes of the local bark skinned timberwolves shone, regarding this ‘growth’ inside the root cathedral with silent respect almost.
The face blinked a few times, as a hoof stomped from a root nearby to join it, and the extension formed a vine and wood skinned Alicorn front half, wings horn and all, draped with wood vines and a greenish/white glow as it leant down, its deep, soft voice replying with a degree of pride and solemnity to it:
“You may call me Everfree.”
Blinking at the sight, Chack heard a few of the timberwolves beyond this enclosure, including the gap he’d shuffled through before, growl at this word in seeming admiration. The wood skinned alicorn looming 20 feet over him regarded him with blank eyes, while the shimmering white puddle and well glowed brightly behind him, flaring with the name.
The Salamander felt the urge to bow, but at this point, he didn’t know at all what to do against this being, this spirit of the forest come to life. Lord of Everfree, god of the Timberwolves and ruler of all untamed in Equestria, the hidden king.

Mangrove maze

Staggering through the last outcropping, Starswirl found himself stumbling down a steep rocky slope of dark blue rocks, the white glow focusing deep inside what looked like an open cavern.
As he felt the looming presence growing around him, he saw something ahead, glowing.
A tree sapling, crystalline in structure, with the white mist glowing around it.
As he ventured closer however, he heard the creak and rustle of wood and stone, as he saw a cloud of white mist flowing down the slope begin to gather around a shifting mangrove tree, the vinelike extensions twisting to form into a rough shape before his eyes off to the side.
Within the form of the mangrove tree’s branches and twigs, a set of bark like eyes emerged, similar to the Timberwolves but wiser, far older. Yet the Alicorn shape that emerged, flanked with goat like horns, a wolflike snout and draconian claws from its hooves, gave Starswirl reason to be wary, thinking this was another dream.
“A dream this is not, Starswirl.”
“How do you know my name spirit?” Starswirl asked bluntly, as he saw the green glow of Timberwolf eyes beginning to watch him from afar.
“Spirit, better than what your friend called me, the Salamander. I have already introduced myself to him, but you have yet to meet Everfree.”
“The forest?” Starswirl asked warily, before a reverberating chuckle and sigh echoed in the dark night, the white light from the glowing parts of the mangrove tree, white mists and even the small crystalline tree sapling in the cavern nearby blinking at this.
“Yes, and no. I am Everfree, though in mortal life I was the first Alicorn, of a name I willingly forgot. You are one of the few alive today that was born before I was.”
“Then I expect you to be more to the point than you are now, what do you want, why did you lead me here?” Starswirl asked, pointing to the strange tree sapling.
“I came to offer, help. What happens out there affects my domain, and I came to offer help in your quest for a source of power, to counter those who use their own for ultimately, destructive ends for all but themselves.”
“The vision…” Starswirl breathed, to which Everfree replied:
“Your future, your last moments. Time is an illusion to me, and I can show those living the future, though only their own. Futures are never set, but that warning is hopefully enough to remind you the grave danger out there right now.”
Starswirl scoffed at this, replying to the forest bodied Alicorn form standing before him formed of mangrove branches: “I need not be reminded of the danger I know all too well, personally in their leader’s case.”

Starswirl scoffed at this, replying to the forest bodied Alicorn form standing before him formed of mangrove branches: “I need not be reminded of the danger I know all too well, personally in their leader’s case.”
“Then you must realise that by that future, as I read your thoughts, I had to intervene. I saw my domain gone, along with many others beyond this forest. That is why I called you here. There is great power in this forest, in focused spots like you hoped. But it is power that cannot be easily harnessed.”
“I never expected power to undo Siral’s evils now and to come to be easy to use. Teach me.”
“We shall see. I sense doubts in your mind.”
“Every second wasted is one he can scheme; my doubts are of how full your commitment to ‘helping’ me truly is.” Starswirl replied impatiently, losing his temper as he had often been doing in these more stressful times.
The Alicorn turned his head in scepticism of the wizard before him, before the branches creaked with him turning to the sapling before him in the alcove, with a calm voice perpetuating through the clearing, the stars barely visible overhead:
“Then let us begin. When we finish, you and your friend shall have your roles as we have foreseen to undo the futures to come if left unchecked.”
“Forgive me if I have doubts about undoing futures, a prophecy set about all this.”
“A prophecy you devoted to following, preparing for what was to come. Now, we shall work to prevent a future, not to prepare for it. Make fate your own design as is natural.”
Somehow, Starswirl found himself not at all disagreeing with this. He was officially done with following prophecy, he sought to change the course of things, however was best and most efficient.
And so the long teachings by Everfree to the Wizard, and elsewhere with the Salamander, continued through the night, with their ultimate tests to come.

Author's Notes:

Everfree, deity of the forest, the first Alicorn, who chose a life of solitude to bond with nature in the one untamed part of Equestria, then at the time a small forest, now much bigger. More and more ‘control’ of Equestria’s features, weather and nature made the more chaotic magic manifest stronger in Everfree and other ‘oasis’s’ of natural order grow in size.
Able to see people’s futures by reading their minds, his ‘design’ of the Alicorn avatars is reminiscent of the Timberwolves in body features.
But all the while though, Starswirl’s vision of his future shows his last moments in a war to come, one he hopes to avoid at all costs, where Siral carried on with his desire to control his servants, 7 or more, more directly with indoctrination means.
He is led to a certain alcove with a rather small, for now, crystalline tree in a blue/grey stoned cavern alcove.
Chack meanwhile is lured, his own being vague messages that drag him to a strange pool of some sort.